SOURCE: Fisher, Marc. “Meeting the Challenge.” American Journalism Review 23, no. 8 (October 2001): 18.

In the following essay, Fisher praises the American news media coverage of the September 11 attacks, calling the coverage efforts valiant and impressive.

Under wrenching circumstances, the American news media covered the horrific events of September 11 impressively and valiantly.

The video of a jumbo jet slipping into the skyscraper, silently, smoothly, as if this were a normal bit of physics. The photos of human beings, New Yorkers, covered in ash, holding briefcases, wearing work clothes, as if this were how they went to the office that day. The descriptions by reporters who were there: Sonny Kleinfield in the New York Times, writing that “on the street there was endless paper and unmatched shoes,” and then, on the second day, calling his town “a city of less.” Bart Gellman's riveting detail in the Washington Post, writing about the man...